The new blackjack-in-Las Vegas film "21" is just the latest to spread the myth that the only people who can count cards are math prodigies and high-functioning autistics. It's so not the case.

Pay attention now. For cards 10 and above, subtract 1. For every card 6 and lower, add 1. Cards 7, 8 and 9 are neutral. When the hand climbs to +15 or higher, consider it a hot hand, with most of the face cards still unturned. It's just that simple.

Beating the system the Vegas casinos have set up to expose card counters is much harder, of course, but evidently not as challenging as it to make a good movie about this subject.

"21" is based on a true story about a small group of card-counting MIT students who had figured out how to beat the Vegas, at least for as long as it took them to make a real killing and then get going while the getting was still good.

It's a great story, but once you process all the pretty lights at the Red Rock and the new Planet Hollywood, the fact remains that blackjack doesn't make for a terribly visual story.

Maybe "21" would've been better as a documentary or at least a docudrama, for in its present incarnation, as an MTV generation-friendly thriller, it kind of reeks.

Well, it's boring -- that's the film's greater sin. Had its plot points been more outlandish maybe it wouldn't have been, but they're already more than outlandish enough, thank you.

Sturgess is today's It Boy, although we're not sure how legit that title is when your only major film credits are last summer's loopy Beatles musical "Across the Universe" (which some people went crazy for, go figure), and this one.

That the lanky Brit with, coincidentally, a Beatles haircut here is able to carry this film is probably more a testament to the lightweight quality of the picture.

Sturgess must share screen time with a couple of heavies. The professor is played by Kevin Spacey, and while he effortlessly dips into his seemingly bottomless pool of swarminess, his character appears to have been written with a Wagner Spray Tech Power Painter.

A movie with Spacey and Fishburne calling the shots, that we'll sign up for, but "21" is more focused on Ben and his callow card-counting colleagues.

Ben's half-hearted love interest comes in the form of Kate Bosworth. If she's a richly talented actress we may never know. The spitting image of a Barbie doll (no fault of hers), she's probably fated for a career that's kind of superficial.

A couple of attractive Asians and some punk who leaves the movie early for being such a jerk round out this MIT gang.

"21" follows a familiar trajectory, as our golden boy, after a meteoric rise, falls hard and must reassess where his values went. The bad people who made him this way get their comeuppance. You've seen it before.

At least the movie has the good sense to reference Dustin Hoffman's character in "Rain Man," one of the most quotable movies of the past 25 years which, as you may recall, featured a key card-counting scene also set in Vegas.

We'll say this for "21" -- it's definitely going to be on our "serious injury" list.

2 stars. This film is rated PG-13 for some violence and sexual content including partial nudity. 118 min.